Conclusion: Social Europe Is Dead. What’s Next?

Abstract

The last few years have undeniably been eventful for Europe in ways which are difficult to interpret as one struggles to adjudicate between those positing a stalling of European integration and a second camp claiming formidable acceleration in pace and scope. Although many new structures and policy instruments have emerged, this has seemed to be always ‘too little, too late’ — a phrase which has now become famous in the public debate over EU integration — to deliver an efficient and satisfactory response to the problems which the EU has been facing since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 and the subsequent debt crisis in the eurozone (and beyond). In the immediate aftermath, the banking crisis has morphed into a sovereign debt crisis in some countries, while casting serious questions about budgetary policy, competitiveness, and economic stability elsewhere. During the summer of 2010, the very existence of the eurozone and of the political project that is the EU was on the brink of disintegration. During this period, academic observers have mostly focused their attention on monetary policy, including banking reform and the reform of economic governance. In recent years, however, the effects of both the crisis itself and the policies enforced purportedly to tackle it have come to their full effect.